1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved form of a shelter for pet animals and a method of fabricating a shelter for pet animals.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Shelters for pet animals have long been utilized to protect domesticated pet animals from the cold and from precipitation. For many years pet shelters, such as "dog houses" were constructed of wood. While wooden pet shelters do provide some protection to a pet animal from cold and from precipitation, the extent of protection is limited. The roofs of wooden shelters frequently leak, particularly through cracks between adjacent boards in the roof. Thus, the interior of such a shelter frequently becomes damp during rain and snow, and the pet is often exposed to cold, dripping leaks in the roof of a shelter. Also, the wood will absorb water and will rot and splinter. The primary advantage of a wooden shelter is that it provides an enclosure which a pet animal may occupy. The body heat of the animal is at least partially confined within the enclosure, thereby protecting the animal to a slight extent from the chilling effects of cold weather.
In more recent years plastic structures have been utilized as pet animal shelters. Conventional plastic shelters are formed of a homogeneous plastic material throughout, typically by blow molding or thermocasting. Since pet animal shelters can be formed as unitary structures by conventional blowing molding or thermocasting techniques, animal shelters have been produced which do not have cracks or interstices in the roofs as have been characteristic of prior wooden shelters. Consequently, conventional plastic shelters are far less prone to leak and rot than are wooden animal shelters. However, conventional plastic animal shelters also have several disadvantages.
Conventional plastic structures heretofore utilized as animal shelters have been formed with thin, homogeneous plastic walls. Such a structure provides only very limited thermal insulating characteristics. Consequently, when conventional plastic shelters are utilized out of doors in cold weather, there is only a very limited entrapment of body heat from the animal within the shelter. Furthermore, conventional plastic shelters are very poorly ventilated so that solar radiation is entrapped to a high degree, thus rendering the cavity within the shelter extremely hot when the shelter is exposed to direct sunlight on warm days. As a consequence, plastic shelters have heretofore been too hot to adequately shelter an animal from the sun in warm weather and too cold to protect an animal in cold weather.